"how does the individual get money on to his mobile phone account to meet the DCB's?" etc.

Jake, I'm too mean and lazy to do much shopping so I'm the worst person to answer your question, but I'll give it a go. I don't think Bango are targeting people with no bank account, but I'll start with the unbanked. It's possible to have a Pay As You Go account where you top up in a newsagent by paying cash and getting a card scanned. I don't mean a bank card, I mean a card which says which phone is being topped up. Not every newsagent will do it. I don't know if that's at all popular in this country, but I suppose they have something like that in countries where many people have a phone and no bank account.

If you buy online with a credit or debit card, you either have to key in card numbers and other stuff every time you buy, or you register your card with a company like Amazon so they know about your card when you check out, having already logged in. If you register, you hope the details aren't hacked. DCB is easier and probably more secure. From https://www.cm.com/blog/the-8-advantages-of-direct-carrier-billing/ ' "DCB is the most quick and simple payment method found in the market", says Cristy Gonzáles Morales, DCB specialist and developer at CM Telecom. This is a one-click payment and there is no need to create an extra account or fill in your bank account number. '. I suppose DCB is easier because the carrier already knows the account it's carrying. Also, debit cards have fees the merchants have to pay (probably more than the cost of DCB), and credit cardholders have to settle in time to avoid paying interest.

If one does a valuation of Bango based on the acquisition today of BilltoMobile it would be worth approx £4.5m. Why it has a market cap of £37m is beyond me. As for it making a profit in 2018 ............

Bango are toast. I was bearish back in 2013 and surprised the share price lasted as long as it did. Bango have almost no revenue of merit. For all their bluster they barely took more than £3m in revenue barely better than my local corner shop. This was a 50% drop on the prior year, yet all their costs are rising. In the world of "race to zero" where without any identifiable barrier to entry transaction costs tend t 0 Bango are in the wrong place. with the move towards transactionless payments Bango are in a tight spot. The smoke and mirrors of their accounting to have the gaul to focos on End user spend id laughable but even when you look at that total spend by consumers through its platform that is a pitiful £50m. That is barely 1 day of app transaction spends through the Iphone. Bango had better hope Apple or Google buys them soon as they are running out of time.

"Telefónica Germany is working with Apple related to carrier billing, a spokesperson told us in an email. Payment via the O2 phone bill is now available for Apple Music, iTunes, App Store and iBooks Store Purchases. The service is gradually being rolled out and will be available for all O2 customers (prepaid and postpaid) in Germany by the beginning of November 2015.

We have heard on the grapevine that Apple had been talking with Bango, a carrier billing provider, to roll out carrier billing functionality on iTunes. Another source says that its not Bango working on this deal, pointing out that O2 also has a relationship with Boku, another carrier billing provider that O2 has backed financially.

However, contained in the report Bango refers to published by Progressive Equity research,

searching for the term 'Boku' in the report highlights only the following information:

"US-based, Boku claims connections to over 250 operators globally. It also has a blue-chip list of merchant clients, including EA, Facebook, Sony and Spotify. However, we note that the website does not list any of the key mobile app stores on its client page. Boku is privately / VC owned, and has completed a number of fundraisings over recent years. As a private company, publicly-available financial information is limited. However, market sources suggest that the company delivered revenue of c$200m in 2013 and has raised over $75m of funding over the recent past."

Searching for the term 'Bango' and further digging reveals this:

"Competitive Positioning
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the initial DCB deployments were instigated by MNOs attempting to interface directly with the app stores. However, anecdotally, we believe that over recent years operators are appreciating the value of leveraging third party platforms to offer carrier billing in app stores. Telefonica Group, for example, launched an in-house DCB platform called BlueVia in 2010...."

Googling 'Boku BlueVia' and 'Boku O2' arrives at a number of results that link to various articles, in particular these two (articles also available on the Boku website):

However, it suggests in the Progressive Equity research PDF, Link 2, just a bit further down from the last snippet about Competitive Positioning, that the business created by Boku's partnership with BlueVia and O2 around 2010 and 2011 has since been taken over by the Bango service:

"...However, after just 2 or 3 years, this was dropped, with Bango picking-up much of the business that was slated to run across the BlueVia platform..."

We estimate that there are currently 278 DCB activations globally, with Microsoft, Google and Blackberry representing 263 of these. Of the 278, we believe 127 are direct app store:MNO relationships, with the remainder being third-party connections. Of the third-party activations, the market is dominated by one player  Bango, which has 119 activations. This represents a share of over 40% of the total market (278), and is almost three times the aggregate of the key third-party DCB suppliers. As will be discussed below, Bango was an early entrant into the mobile payment space. Over the past sixteen years it has made significant investments in both its platform and product set. The benefit of this historic investment appears to be apparent - it has almost half the market. Bango is the exclusive DCB provider to the Amazon, Blackberry, Mozilla and Samsung app stores. It has one third-party competitor on the Mic

OK set of results. Investment is now made and SG&A costs steady. Enough funds after last placing to off-set the 2014 loss. Main objective for 2015 must be to bring in the extra pipe-line business to generate the margin revenue using the new charging model = Get cash positive.

Still a risk but seems less now and they seem to be on the right path. If management deliver in 2015 then share price could be back tot the 120p level, if not better set a stop loss at something like 65p.

Very quiet board for a share that has a nice steady rise. I was hoping for a dip to buy, it never came so now have invested. I'm not a big fan of AIM shares, they can swing quite a lot on small volume and get over hyped, but Bango seems to have a good story, room for growth and is not frequented by those quick profit merchants (hence the quiet BB). I wanted to diversify my portfolio to some smaller , riskier, potentially higher gains tech stocks hence my investment. Good luck to all

Some stocks fall after GOOD NEWS! ....IS it just normal levels of profit taking? Yes, imo. BUT the underlying reason for many pi's taking early profits, is simply they are afraid they'll be left in paper losses!
Thus, if the stock, after 'good news' is then shorted, then kiss good bye to this stock reaching new highs?

The 'shorts' therefore 'win' their bets, whereas the 'longs' lose the best part of their investment, possibly for some time to come......and just when you thought this couldn't go any lower, THEY'LL SHORT THE STOCK AGAIN !

Why is this? They both can't win...the money has to come from somewhere?

Bookmark the links if you wish to 'pass the LINK/s on'.... or read later?

BE A PART OF IT

# The big problem with shorting is that THEY (the shorters) WOULD most likely lose most of their money IF they just 'bet' on the price going down without trying to 'help' it down?

So, there is the 'catch 22' scenario. No one would know of an RNS to be released that will contain BAD NEWS, if they did and then 'shorted' the stock, then they are guilty of 'insider trading'.

The only sure way to short a stock and WIN is to spread dis-information to defame the company with help from other posters that are in concert with them. To ENSURE that they don't lose the biggest part of their 'short', ironically, then, they must deramp with (seemingly) believable posts.

When the pro's do it, they simply get the media or well known 'crooked' tipsters, analysts or brokers to do it for them. (say no more). .They're all in cahoots with each other!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The campaign against shorting is for the benefit of the 'cheated' investors that cannot control their investments due to the dirty tricks played out by co-ordinated deramping in order to tank the sp to abnormally low levels.

When the campaign is complete, the results will be reviewed by Govt legislators re- further action! The branch of the FSA ie FCA will be asked by Davide Serra to conduct an investigation into short selling practices, with the view to either:- an outright ban on short selling, or at the very least to be better and more vigorously regulated !

The HMGovt epetition is a regulated and monitored site with legal authority that will NOT under any circumstances allow any auspicious individuals to prevent 'others' from casting their free votes. Discussions of which are freely entered into with individual viewpoints.

Hi Steve,
I have been in and out of Bango since 2005. Initially bought at £2.06, and it went South. Averaged down in 2008 when it hit 55p. I sold and made a reasonable profit in 2012.
Currently have a reasonable holding at average cost £1.63. Could have sold a while back for a handsome profit, but sat tight. Thinking of topping up (averaging down) at current level.

I still hold the faith that Bango has the potential to make me a bit more money.

Campaign against organized short-selling......
..... and more control on unjustified deramping/ramping?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
did ya vote, now at 3,628 votes (they can't all be wrong?)

No one hears 'whispers'...it's just another ruse to get pi's to buy or sell ?

Watch out for the very 'nice' posters that are 'sympathetic' but constantly use phrases like "sorry to say"... "going down, i'm afraid"...."Oh dear".... "told you so" ... "placing on its way, more dilution"...."News on its way"....."there must be a leak, it's a duster"..."been in this for years and still losing money"....."the BoD stinks"....."whispers from the City".....

It is estimated that over 90% of AIM stocks are INFECTED by short-sellers !

Many highly popular stocks are going down even on GOOD NEWS !

# IF you were a short-seller, BLUFFING, (basically manipulating a shares' price) about a company's overvalued share price, you might not want to *draw attention to yourself since you could get accused of stock manipulation. So you would hope (OR PLAN FOR) others to get involved and to present SEEMINGLY GOOD REASONS to short the stock.

You would want to put AS MUCH FEAR INTO 'LONGS' as possible and would use high volume short trading as well as buying to drive the share price down as low as you can and as long as you can. You really want the longs to fold and to get out of the game. If you are consistently seeing sellers overwhelming buyers driving a share price down as a stock seems to be going up, I can assure you it's probably shorts' selling, since longs are totally motivated to sell their shares at the highest possible selling price. #

IT is easier to tank a share price, rather than make it go UP, by short-selling.

RUINOUS to genuine investors.
They may be able to buy in cheap BUT what's the good, if the stock never really recovers?

AND when they have got you all hooked on the 'lovely' new all-time LOW.....They'll SHORT IT AGAIN !

# ChalieHarper - posted on iii - TRP
IF a fund owns a large share holding in a firm and is long.... whilst waiting for its end game to materialise, it loans out any number of its shares to a shorter...the shorter then manipulate the share price down making £X amount when short ended.... the shorter then gives the loaned shares back and splits the proceeds 50/50.

They both make cash, probably during a time when not much is happening with the sp. IT's a WIN-WIN for them but BAD news for the pi's who as usual may have sold at a loss because the cash has to come from somewhere. #

# Topalov asks on iii Ariana Res-AAU
(to give balance to this debate, i have included his response and Q.s with my reply)

Morning Zappados
I am not invested here, but I'm watching it very closely. Way, way under the radar. Its trading below what I would consider it to be worth, and if The Amazon deal comes off, it could go anywhere. Risky, but definitely worth a punt. What do you hold, and at what average?
Steve

Nerve-Ray-Anderson
A Cambridge-Africa technology alliance is set to improve navigation through the complex mobile payment market in Sub-Saharan Africa that has been rife with corruption, political obstacles and other risks.
Bango in the UK and Africa-based MMIT have joined forces to launch M- Ifl&#7885;, a safe payment solution that enables online transactions for digital content.
Bango CEO Ray Anderson said M-Ifl&#7885; was tailored to the needs of industry leaders in mobile content.
Anderson said: Theres a smartphone boom in Africa and a frustrated demand for digital content. App stores and other merchants have been waiting for the reassurance of M-Ifl&#7885;, which limits the risk of doing business in Africa and has been designed to suit the cash up front instincts of the African market.
MMIT is an African-based mobile payment software developer with a mission to revolutionise mobile money payment and transfers in Africa. The jointly developed M-Ifl&#7885; solution is a billing mechanism and verification portal for digital wallets, specifically designed to fit the cash-exchange culture of Africa.
Anderson said the solution offers reliability and security to app stores and digital merchants, providing millions of people in Africa with the ability to make mobile payments for apps, games and other smartphone content.
Starting in key Sub-Saharan markets, M-Ifl&#7885; will initially be available in Kenya and Nigeria, quickly followed by Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia. It is already integrated with some of the major mobile wallet providers in Africa, including Mobipay in Kenya and Stanbic IBTC Mobile Money in Nigeria, with further rollouts in process.
The technology is a payment verification portal that is a secure conduit for mobile content providers to reach the African market  acting as an intermediary between mobile merchants and mobile wallet providers.
M-Ifl&#7885; allows consumers with a mobile wallet account in Africa to pick their wallet provider as a payment option at the checkout page of a content site. The wallet holder enters their mobile wallet number for account verification and obtains the content.
In near real-time, the tool queries the accounts of mobile wallet subscribers to determine if the subscriber has enough value in their wallet account to facilitate a purchase.
M-Ifl&#7885; also enables those without a mobile wallet to buy content on major app stores, using a top-up card that can be bought in retail outlets, with codes to use at the checkout page of an app store or other merchant site.
Anderson said M-Ifl&#7885; minimised risk and allowed merchants to be paid up front. The result is that app stores and other merchants bypass traditional issues such as, payments being held up in another country due to bureaucracy, fraud or changes in regulation.
Meanwhile African consumers can look forward to full participation in the mobile commerce explosion, he said.
Africas growing population of smartphone users are young, tech savvy and early adopters by instinct. However, when it comes to payment for mobile apps and content, consumers in Africa are restricted, often excluded from mobile commerce because merchants are fearful of the risks of doing business in Africa. M-Ifl&#7885; seeks to address those issues and therefore unlock a world of mobile payments.
Jide Akindele, CEO of MMIT commented: Mobile billing has been held back across much of Africa, limited by a range of technological and political risk factors.
Political instability in a number of Sub-Saharan countries has resulted in unclear regulatory environments and a lack of proper infrastructure to support stable carrier-grade billing systems.
Settlement and collection of funds is complex, with rapidly fluctuating exchange rates, varyi

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